


a lighthouse and a shepherd

by movfic



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Minor Character Death, its will obvi but its not the focus of the fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-04
Updated: 2020-04-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:40:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23471833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/movfic/pseuds/movfic
Summary: there is a dichotomy to mike hanlon
Comments: 4
Kudos: 8





	a lighthouse and a shepherd

**Author's Note:**

> everyone shut the fuck up. its mike loving hours.

there is a dichotomy to mike hanlon. the desire to learn more even at great cost to himself, for instance: he stays in derry and gets a job at the library and tends to his fathers photo collection, learns the ins and outs of all the legends and stories and wives tales surrounding pennywise, all the tragedies that It leaves in its wake. ( _i could turn a blind eye too_ , mike thinks, _just like everyone else in this town, i could look the other way and forget that the dirt around derrys roots is rancid, festering._ bad soil, his father had said once, bad in a way that couldnt be fixed, bad in a way that meant it stayed bad.)  
  
and of his father: his talk as he lay dying, wills one good eye bloodshot with pain. mike sitting flush against his fathers hospital cot, learning of that electric night where hooded torchfire licked the sky and the black spot lived up to its name, became a smoldering streak of embers and bodies. ( _is this story gonna give you nightmares, mikey?_ his father asked, his breath raspy and gasping in his sickness. mike had opened his mouth to lie but thought better of it. _i guess so._ )  
  
when he was a young boy he used to miss the birds when they flew south after harvest, their bodies freckling the late november sky, tiny wings carrying them to warmer pastures. he missed those birds, that is, until that beast in the ironworks chased him down like a fieldmouse, its chest brilliant gold but its wings a dull, dark grey-brown (ashen, burnt, charred–) how it emerged from the cellar hold to bite at him, to peck the flesh off his bones. the memory of grainy film as rodan emerges from his coal mine prison strikes hot, along with the memory of his mothers comforting caresses as he quietly shook in the wings of the aladdin theater. years later he shudders at the thought of pennywise doing the same from his sewer labyrinth, unfurling his massive spider legs and sieging the town like rodan, all flaming breath and sharp teeth.  
  
 _"youre a careful boy, arent you, mikey?" "yes, sir"_ and it's true. hes careful, hes very careful. but he is just as much of his grandfathers grandson as he is his fathers son so he takes his nailgun down to the sewers, unloaded but heavy against his trembling palm. he thinks of beverly's slingshot and the silver dollar theyd hammered into a slug and realizes that he is a different kind of careful than them, one molded by the dead chickens in their yard, by his mothers dishrag scolding when he came home after dark. his granddad is right though, he is too soft and he fears for his friends and derry and he carries that burden for years. sometimes he feels like that gun, springloaded and ready to go off, ready to fire lethal and wake the whole world up. _cant you see? cant you all see? people are dead! people are dead and youre all sitting glazy eyed eating supper as if your sister, brother, child wasn't just swallowed up like bait on a lure!_ but more often than not though he just feels like a rusty nail, like any more weight on his shoulders will snap him in half, leaving him broken in a plume of red dust.  
  
hes a lighthouse and a shepherd and a rabbit in a bolthole. fearful and patient and unwavering, he sets the turtles wheels in motion but he is stagnant like the water in the shallowest parts of the kenduskeag, stuck in a town that holds few warm feelings for him and away from people who understand him wholly, who became his home that blistering summer of '89.

**Author's Note:**

> sry lost steam at the end there but i will never not love being introspective about mike. anyway this is kind of a combination of movie and book verse where will dies of cancer like in book and mikes mother and grandfather raise him. thanks and have a good night.


End file.
